NEWS BLOG (WSAU) You’ve heard about the leaks in the Obama Administration. The allegation is that the leakers are letting positive, confidential information leak because it makes the President look good. It’s politics as usual. The leakers will never be found. And the rule-of-thumb is to look at who benefits from the leaked information – that’s where it’s coming from.

There are leaks, and there are leaks.

This leak is huge: http://washingtonexaminer.com/hillary-rejected-vp-slot-to-ready-her-own-2016-run/article/2505206

If Hillary Clinton was offered the Vice Presidency and turned it down, that information can never become public. And it gets worse. The reasons cannot be (a) she doesn’t want to be tarred with left-wing policies of the Obama Administration, and/or (b) she thinks Obama might lose and she doesn’t want to go down with the ship.

What’s the problem here? The potential distractions – the potential to throw the campaign off message – are huge. What policies does Mrs. Clinton disagree with? Why does she think the President might lose? How much credibility does Joe Biden have on the campaign trail if the Administration was offering his job to someone else? And the subtext of all of this is that many prominent Democrats must wonder if things would be different if Hillary was the party’s standard-bearer in 2008.

Who benefits from this leak? The answer is obvious. And who might be in a position to leak it? A certain former president who’d like to help his wife, perhaps?

If you sense that one campaign is humming and another campaign is out-of-sync, you’re right.

Chris Conley
8/17